A Model of Web Server Performance

Despite the increasing number of Web (i.e., HTTP) servers in use each day, little is definitively known about their performance characteristics. We present a simple, high-level, open queueing network model from which we derive several general performance results for Web servers on the Internet. Multiple-server systems are also analyzed. A theoretical upper bound on the serving capacity of Web servers is defined. As Web servers approach this boundary response times increase suddenly toward infinity, disabling the server; but limiting the server's simultaneous connections prevents this problem. The effects of file size, server speed, and network bandwidth on response time are also investigated. In addition, the relative merits of several methods of improving server performance are evaluated.

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